Android O is Almost Here, so Here’s Android Distribution Charted for the Past 5 Years

Yesterday’s Android distribution numbers should be the final numbers released before Android O goes stable and starts rolling out to Nexus and Pixel devices, as well as manufacturers who want to get updates ready for their own phones. We included a small chart in that post that showed the past year of data from Google, but decided to come back today with all of it dating back to June 2012 (We went back to June 2012 because that’s as far back as Google began sharing this information.). That’s right, we’ve got a couple of small charts below that shows you Android distribution (the percentage of specific Android builds at any given time) for the past 5 years.

What’s the point? Well, really just to show you a visual representation of how Android versions have been adopted over the years. Because again, these distribution numbers show the “relative number of devices that share a certain characteristic, such as Android version,” according to Google. In other words, it’s a good way to tell which versions of Android are on the most devices each month, how quickly the newest versions are being adopted to new devices, etc.

The first chart we’ve got here is a simple line graph from June 2012 to August 2017.

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The second is the same, only with more color in case those lines are bugging your eyes.

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UPDATE: Some of you asked for the stacked version, so here you go.

(Click for larger version)

A couple of things standout to me right away. First, you can see that the extra time that Jelly Bean was around (released July 2012; KitKat didn’t arrive until October 2013) allowed for it to be adopted by more manufacturers. It peaked at just over 60% of the Android pie and was around 48% when KitKat was released. Since then, though, adoption of new versions hasn’t kept up and appears to be declining each year, especially as Android has switched to a yearly major release cycle.

KitKat topped out at just over 40% adoption and was at 30% when Lollipop was released the next year. But Lollipop didn’t ever get to 40% and sat at 23% as Marshmallow arrived. With Nougat, the numbers are even lower across the board. Should Android O drop later this month, Nougat won’t even be on 20% of Android devices.

Now, Google did say that Android O has Project Treble built in and could lead to quicker updates in the feature. It allows for Android updates to flow from Google to device manufacturer to you without necessarily having to stop and worry about additional readiness steps from Qualcomm and other chipset makers. In a way, it eliminated an entire step of the update process. Will it solve all of the Android update issues? No, because there are still manufacturers and carriers involved, though things should speed up some. You also have to remember that this new Android architecture starts with Android O and pushes forward, so older devices won’t be able to take advantage of this slimmer update process. We may not see the benefit of Project Treble for a couple of years.

So what’s the takeway then? These charts show you what we’ve known about Android for a long time – that there are enough players in this game making it impossible for everyone to keep up. Call it fragmentation or understand that this is just how Android is built and distributed. It’s not a single entity controlling everything from top to bottom except with Google’s own phones, like Nexus or Pixel. There is almost no way for these numbers to look much different without some massive changes to the way Google makes Android and its updates available.

What we’ll have to watch going forward is whether or not tweaks like Project Treble make a difference. What will this chart look like in two or three years? Will we ever see another version of Android hit 60% or more, or will the adoption rate continue to slide?

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Ron Josiah

It’s 2017, why are carriers still involved in the update process? Exing out the chipset maker is not enough. Apple’s approach is perfect in this regard. Keep the greedy carriers off of the phones. Only occasional network updates from the carrier are necessary. This is how it was on my iPhone 6 Plus. Since Samsung is the largest Android OEM they could easily do this and the rest of the industry would follow.

WordSpaghetti

And this is why I’ll be getting an iPhone again next year.

Greyhame

I have an iPhone and Pixel. With the iPhone’s software that far behind, the importance of updates is lessened..

Adrian

I honestly don’t see consistent updates until an exploit is actually used in the wild and causes people financial harm. Once that happens, carriers and OEMs (whoever dropped the ball when it comes to the available updates) get sued, it’ll never change. They have zero reason to at this point. People are just going to buy new phones whether they can afford to or can’t.

All one has to do is look at XDA to know that if some people in their spare time can port feature rich roms to older devices, OEMs and carriers could too if they wanted to. Their budgets a just a little bigger than modders who do it for free.

Nobody will change anything until their indifference costs them money.

Mark

Shows how big of an impact Samsung has on this. Jelly Bean, Kit Kat, Lollipop and Marshmallow all peaked in April of each year (coinciding with the Galaxy S series launch)

TeeJay1100

There is no incentive for OEM’s to care or change how they’re doing stuff. Most OEM’s make their money upfront from hardware, so the software update side isn’t a major concern. They got what they were after, your sale. The process will never end unless Google steps in drastically to change something which I don’t think they care enough to do anything about it. A 3/4 yr old OS still has a huge chunk of distribution, that’s sad. Totally unacceptable. Pixels aren’t for everyone, so the statement “if you want updates buy a Google sold device” isn’t a one size fits all. That statement is more of a band aid solution, than a solution to fix the actual problem. Most consumers won’t even blink at a Pixel device because other brands offer what they want in a device.

lamegamer

I can’t wait for Android Zero.

WordSpaghetti

Android Zero, now on zero devices. Get it never!

MeTaLiX

Gingerbread’s longevity is interesting. Notably, Honeycomb was for tablets only, and ICS requirements were far beyond what was required for existing Gingerbread devices. Ars wrote an article talking about these things, specifically.Jelly Bean brought “Project Butter” and voice search, and came at a time when Android popularity was in the middle of a major upswing.

XtremeMeme

Google should just breakdown their chart.Show their Android upgrade distribution rate, show other OEM upgrade rates, and Androids total.Time to shame the OEMs like they were rumored to do.

RazorSky

It’s interesting how only the two have cracked 60%. Also please pick better colors, or put labels on the lines.

Jason

Penetration and absolute number are two different things. The installed based of android devices has grown immensely over that time period. So for Nougat to reach, say, 40% of devices means significantly more total installs than Kit Kat at 40%. It would be interesting to see these charts adjusted for total installs instead of penetration rate.

JempyR1

Gingerbread’s longevity is interesting. Notably, Honeycomb was for tablets only, and ICS requirements were far beyond what was required for existing Gingerbread devices. Ars wrote an article talking about these things, specifically.Jelly Bean brought “Project Butter” and voice search, and came at a time when Android popularity was in the middle of a major upswing.

Lord Warden

That’s the whole point of Treble. It’s pretty clear at this point that they want to make their own chip. Treble is the temp solution while they get to that point.

John Bush

Great graph. Just shows you how little the average user cares about OS updates. As long as there apps work, they just go on their marry way.

Domier

Any chance you could share the dataset for this? Would love to see a stacked area out of 100% graphs instead of the overlapping lines (like this: http://i.imgur.com/7bP2pmj.png)

They might as well at this point. Or just sell 50M Pixel phones and forget about the heh.

TeeJay1100

Selling 50M Pixels won’t happen anytime soon.

Duffman

Can they even make that many Pixels? hahahaha

michael arazan

Hopefully with 2 separate manufacturers doing each phone they can.

But I think Google is always paranoid about making more phones than they can sell and eating it, like HTC probably has. They aren’t sure enough to make 5 or 10 million phones at once like Samsung does at an initial release. They always would rather order small, sell out, and reorder more, which sucks for the consumer.

Would tend to agree. Treble is Google making it easier on themselves but the OEMs and carriers won’t be any better.

sinfoman

” Android O has Project Treble built in ” — I’ve been pondering this a bit lately and wondered this question. No device today (aside from beta builds) was designed with this functionality to be native. I wonder how they’re going to update current devices with this functionality. From an outside standpoint (I haven’t seen the code, and probably would barely understand it if I did) it would seem you’d want to wait to purchase a device that had this originally certified by your carrier for your phone. It seems like it would be a difficult module to push OTA. Thoughts?

Marydruss

Cool20a

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Miguel

This has always been the issue, it’s not Google, it’s the OEM, they could care less.

arthur2142

*couldn’t care less

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Was pretty shocked to see JB and Gingerbread so highly adopted. Forgot how big they were. Now they just come through too fast for OEMs.

Nayners

I think that several OEMs were/are using Gingerbread and Jelly Bean for a long time in prepaid phones (tracfone, etc) and cheap carrier phones. My mother-in-law loves her Gingerbread phone /rollseyes.

n900mixalot

Gingerbread’s longevity is interesting. Notably, Honeycomb was for tablets only, and ICS requirements were far beyond what was required for existing Gingerbread devices. Ars wrote an article talking about these things, specifically.

Jelly Bean brought “Project Butter” and voice search, and came at a time when Android popularity was in the middle of a major upswing.